In an Age of Technology, Can We Govern Ourselves?
Best read with bourbon.
If you pull far enough back from the day to day debate over technology’s impact on society — far enough that Facebook’s destabilization of democracy, Amazon’s conquering of capitalism, and Google’s domination of our data flows start to blend into one broader, more cohesive picture — what does that picture communicate about the state of humanity today?
Technology forces us to recalculate what it means to be human — what is essentially us, and whether technology represents us, or some emerging otherness which alienates or even terrifies us. We have clothed ourselves in newly discovered data, we have yoked ourselves to new algorithmic harnesses, and we are waking to the human costs of this new practice. Who are we becoming?
Nearly two years ago I predicted that the bloom would fade from the technology industry’s rose, and so far, so true. But as we begin to lose faith in the icons of our former narratives, a nagging and increasingly urgent question arises: In a world where we imaging merging with technology, what makes us uniquely human?
Our lives are now driven in large part by data, code, and processing, and by the governance of algorithms. These determine how data flows, and what insights and decisions are taken as a result.
So yes, software has, in a way, eaten the world. But software is not something being done to us. We have turned the physical world into data, we have translated our thoughts, actions, needs and desires into data, and we have submitted that data for algorithmic inspection and processing. What we now struggle with is the result of these new habits — the force of technology looping back upon the world, bending it to a new will. What agency — and responsibility — do we have? Whose will? To what end?
